Top 5 moments on this forum that have broke my heart

[whattheFUE]

1. When a good member is driven away after being ganged up on by the less well informed, and supported by admin for behind the scenes reasons. (The answer to 99 out of a 100 questions is....... drumroll. . . . money.) I miss Spex, Mickey, JoeTillman and the other more elegant shill-patients that used to gather around these parts. It was refreshing to hear them speak, because you knew what they were going to say, who they were going to bash and what general energy their post would contain. A "Dana White" of hair loss would be a great thing. Dr. Feller would be a choice here as he goes into his golden years, but the man is so unstable and gets offended too easily in a place where offending someone is often the only best option. Ultimately, if the forum becomes what it's current policy is gearing towards, it will be left with the admin and a few users that strongly agree with him and thrive through the bizarre false-protection that being friends with the admin on a site gives. More experienced users will become jaded with the selective censorship dance with mob mentality that seems to fill the air here as of late. 

2. When a respected surgeon has a bad result that shows their clinic wasn't the kool-aid that we all sought. Everybody has a bad day, but not everybody has a bad career.

3. When a respected surgeon has a bad result, and comes on to defend it, talking to forum members here like we're patients. We're not, we're something in between. As such, there needs to be more carefully thought out respect to avoid getting into what most of Feller's interactions here were before he quit. An angry old man unable to communicate with potential patients as he sees them as so far below them its laughable. Let's not ever do that again.

4. When we have a patient post a case with a great doc that doesn't have many cases, everything looks like it's going to take off, then that guy disapprears. Retention is a major problem. Giving users bonuses or increased board rights for completing a full year's journey of successful pics is an obvious solution to this problem.

5. When someone comes along with something that sounds feasible but amazing -- hair duplication and piloscopy come to mind -- something that would completely invert the hair loss surgery industry, and go beyond that to influence what the general population looks like. A procedure so devastatingly effective, it changes our believes about what's normal. Breast implants did this decades ago, boner pills came a bit after, accutane, antiobiotics, ketogenic dieting, removing pesticides from food, toxins from air... Someone comes along, a confident weirdo. The weirdo is key because it reminds you there's no basis for the  confident. And suggests he is the next thing. The difficulty of encouraging a crazy person while still pulling the reigns on a madman is a palpable balancing act in a field like hair loss. I worry that some version of this happened with piloscopy, even Nigam.

 

Constructive criticism can advance art forward a few decades. Only if it goes on too long and without change do people need to revert back to criticism. But even then, be selective. Silence and ghosting are so important in the modern world.

I wish there was an option to block specific users entirely, so as not to see any of their posts or even their username. This would probably be something to look into Mel.

Edited September 4, 2020 by whattheFUE

[Melvin- Admin]

I don’t hear any suggestions in these posts, other than the ability to block someone. I can ask the webmaster to implement that, it’s a good idea. Other than that, it’s hard to control people on a forum and keep it open. What policy is it gearing towards, people disagree with me all the time, and they’re allowed to say what they want, as long as it’s respectful. You haven’t been on this forum in a long time, so you’ve missed a lot. We removed two surgeons this year. We have always allowed patients the ability to share their genuine dissatisfaction and have never censored anyone.

I have no idea what you’re talking about in your first post. So you’re saying we made Joe, Spex and Mickey leave because of money? First, Mickey stopped posting, he was anonymous and never posted for money, he just moved on from hair loss. Joe left before I was a moderator, but I remember he left because of an ego battle with Bill, our old managing publisher, Spex left for similar reasons. 

Also, looks like you’re the only one that misses Spex.

 

[ciaus]

About system level automated blocking, while I agree the goal of reducing conflict and stress is good, it can fall victim to the unintended consequences of good intentions. Like the potential for confusion/frustration and potential contentiousness because only parts of the discussion are visible to some of the participants. The other people that aren't blocking that person will be reading and sometimes reacting or steering the conversation based on those hidden posts. You might find yourself doing some extra refereeing Melvin. -Just my 2cents.

 

[Melvin- Admin]

Just now, ciaus said:

About system level automated blocking, while I agree the goal of reducing conflict and stress is good, it can fall victim to the unintended consequences of good intentions. Like the potential for confusion/frustration and potential contentiousness because only parts of the discussion are visible to some of the participants. The other people that aren't blocking that person will be reading and sometimes reacting or steering the conversation based on those hidden posts. You might find yourself doing some extra refereeing Melvin. -Just my 2cents.

 

Good point.

[LonelyGraft]

18 hours ago, whattheFUE said:

1. When a good member is driven away after being ganged up on by the less well informed, and supported by admin for behind the scenes reasons. (The answer to 99 out of a 100 questions is....... drumroll. . . . money.) I miss Spex, Mickey, JoeTillman and the other more elegant shill-patients that used to gather around these parts. It was refreshing to hear them speak, because you knew what they were going to say, who they were going to bash and what general energy their post would contain. A "Dana White" of hair loss would be a great thing. Dr. Feller would be a choice here as he goes into his golden years, but the man is so unstable and gets offended too easily in a place where offending someone is often the only best option. Ultimately, if the forum becomes what it's current policy is gearing towards, it will be left with the admin and a few users that strongly agree with him and thrive through the bizarre false-protection that being friends with the admin on a site gives. More experienced users will become jaded with the selective censorship dance with mob mentality that seems to fill the air here as of late. 

2. When a respected surgeon has a bad result that shows their clinic wasn't the kool-aid that we all sought. Everybody has a bad day, but not everybody has a bad career.

3. When a respected surgeon has a bad result, and comes on to defend it, talking to forum members here like we're patients. We're not, we're something in between. As such, there needs to be more carefully thought out respect to avoid getting into what most of Feller's interactions here were before he quit. An angry old man unable to communicate with potential patients as he sees them as so far below them its laughable. Let's not ever do that again.

4. When we have a patient post a case with a great doc that doesn't have many cases, everything looks like it's going to take off, then that guy disapprears. Retention is a major problem. Giving users bonuses or increased board rights for completing a full year's journey of successful pics is an obvious solution to this problem.

5. When someone comes along with something that sounds feasible but amazing -- hair duplication and piloscopy come to mind -- something that would completely invert the hair loss surgery industry, and go beyond that to influence what the general population looks like. A procedure so devastatingly effective, it changes our believes about what's normal. Breast implants did this decades ago, boner pills came a bit after, accutane, antiobiotics, ketogenic dieting, removing pesticides from food, toxins from air... Someone comes along, a confident weirdo. The weirdo is key because it reminds you there's no basis for the  confident. And suggests he is the next thing. The difficulty of encouraging a crazy person while still pulling the reigns on a madman is a palpable balancing act in a field like hair loss. I worry that some version of this happened with piloscopy, even Nigam.

 

Constructive criticism can advance art forward a few decades. Only if it goes on too long and without change do people need to revert back to criticism. But even then, be selective. Silence and ghosting are so important in the modern world.

I wish there was an option to block specific users entirely, so as not to see any of their posts or even their username. This would probably be something to look into Mel.

I can tell you’ve been on the hair loss scene and forums for quite a while (I have too). You make some good points and your post is actually quite refreshing. Even tho this forum is not perfect it’s much more fair than probably any other out there. Of course that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to improve it further.

[whattheFUE]

17 hours ago, Melvin-Moderator said:

So you’re saying we made Joe, Spex and Mickey leave because of money? 

Yes.

[Melvin- Admin]

On 9/5/2020 at 12:44 AM, whattheFUE said:

Yes.

[MusoInOz]

@whattheFUE first off, great handle name!

I dont disagree with what you are saying mate, I have been using this forum since maybe 2009 and have watched it go through all kinds of phases. As I started re-lurking again a few months ago (haven't been active since 2016) I noticed many of the old school popular users such as Spex, Joe etc not appearing. To be honest they are becoming redundant as there is so much information now available compared to 10 years ago, YouTube, new techniques, new clinics, new forums etc etc. We don't need their newest "eBook" or whatever they are trying to market these days online.

Having been a paid rep myself I literally trust less than 5% of the industry with some of things I had experienced behind the scenes. So some of these guys never really had your best intentions at heart. 

Compared with most forums HRN is one of best still in terms of patient posting, there are many surgeons on here whom are recommended that I personally believe are way behind the 8 ball in terms of technique and results, but hey, I don't run this place.